by PJ Skinner
‘Why haven’t we seen any animals yet?’ she asked Wilson.
He laughed. ‘These people,’ he said, gesturing dismissively, ‘they eat everything. Those parrots are not stupid, you know. They fly too high to get shot.’
The jungle was not completely lifeless. There was an abundance of huge, colourful dragonflies and a few red admiral butterflies that looked oddly out of place. The chirping of tree frogs was audible but she did not see any monkeys or jungle-dwelling animals that day. They all got out of the canoe and the men started to clear the river bank of vegetation with broad strokes of their machetes.
‘So what’s the best way of testing the gravels for gold?’ asked Sam.
Wilson spoke very slowly, as if he had memorised the English from a book.
‘We dig pits in the gravel terraces along the river down to bedrock. The men, they pan the gravels from bottom each pit to see if contain gold. Amount of gravel will be measured. Any gold getted will be stored and marked with sample number. When we home, we calculate amount of gold per cubic metre and see if the gravels good for digging.’
He turned away, seemingly drained by this effort and not wanting any questions. He gave orders to the men.
Sam watched Gustino and Rijer do most of the digging, sweating profusely in the humid heat of the river shade. Their spectacular physiques glistened in the sun as they rhythmically dug out the pits. Don Moises did not seem to do anything at all. He just supervised. Wilson wrote copious notes on the type of gravel, the size of the stones, the type of matrix they were in and the composition of the stones and the matrix.
Sam had never worked on alluvial gravels before and paid close attention to this process, asking lots of questions, which were laboriously answered by Wilson. She looked at the stones that made up the gravel but apart from being very smooth and rounded, they did not look geologically interesting.
‘What are you recording about the stones? They look pretty boring to me,’ she said
‘The important thing about stones is roundness. If they very round, this show they transported in the gravels of the river for a long time before they deposited in terraces. This mean that all the light material eroded by river and taked downstream by the current. Gold is heavy and fall down sooner than sand and gravel. Terraces with rounded stones contain materials deposited and returned to the river many times. Each time, concentrates gold more, as lighter material gone out. Terraces on the river ancient and moved many times by ancient rivers. This gives good hope of have areas with concentrations of gold.’
It was necessary to pan the gravel to find out if there was any gold in it. Doña Elodea and Carlos were expert panners. Sam watched them as they loaded their large wooden pans with gravel and bent double to lower them into the water. They swirled the pans on the surface, allowing the water to wash through the top of the gravel to clean out the lighter materials and to free any heavy materials to sink deeper into the pans. They floated the pans on the surface of the river and brushed the clean gravel from the top of the materials in the pan out into the river. The quantity of material in the pan slowly reduced until there was only a patch of black sand left in the indentation at the bottom of the pan. The panner then slowly trickled water taken by hand from the river across the black sand, moving it across the pan.
Sam could see several flecks of gold at the head of the tail of sand. They looked like tiny pieces of glitter but there was no mistaking their yellow glow. She watched every movement and decided that this was something she could learn to do.
The crew often dived into the river from the canoe as it went along. Sam preferred to enter the water from the bank. The river was mud-coloured but pleasantly cool and refreshing. She was careful not to swallow any water, which was full of all sorts of parasites and amoebas. She also made sure there were no routes open to the Candiru before she got into the river. It was a pain swimming in her long-sleeved shirt and trousers all the time. The shirt wrapped itself around her torso and neck, making her feel as if she was being strangled. Her clothes took ages to dry and then got instantly wet again in the canoe. From then on, she would work in wellington boots and shirtsleeves, with a swimming costume under her shirt.
During the first day of sampling, Wilson translated everything for her. He was so attentive that she began to feel uneasy. She was not given anything to do and was very bored.
‘Wilson, what shall I work on? Why don’t I help Doña Elodea?’
‘Here in Sierramar boss not do any manual work. You not carry anything or serve food. The workers lose respect for you after.’
Sam could cope with the novel surroundings but not the inactivity. She found that watching other people work all day lost its charm after a few hours.
At the end of a long, hot first day, they arrived at Arenas, a village of indigenous Indian people, the only one on the river according to Wilson. As they approached the village on a bend in the river, the women gathered on the bank and sang for them. The sun was sliding down a golden sky and all of the leaves of the magnificent jungle canopy were gleaming in the warm light. Sam lay back in the canoe and watched the flocks of far-above parrots winging homeward and the rippling muscles of the boatmen as they sliced up the river through the turgid waters. She knew how lucky she was and soaked up those moments to be relived many times over.
Her reverie was broken by the sound of Wilson arguing with the women over how much their welcoming chorus was worth in terms of a tip. Once they were satisfied, they helped to unload the canoes onto the pebble beach. Then they lifted the bags and boxes onto their backs and carried them up the steps on the river back up to the plateau where the village was located. Finally, all the goods had been carried up to the flat land. They set off through the village with the women still singing. The group had been allocated a sturdy-looking, two-story wooden civil building in the centre of the village, in which to set up their headquarters. From the fresh look of the timber, it had recently been constructed.
They all went to swim and wash in the river, while the women of the village prepared a dinner of rice and tuna. Sam waited until the rest had gone before she washed herself but she could not shake off the feeling that she was being watched.
The main body of the village of Arenas, including the house in which they were staying, was built around a playing field where all the men and older boys were playing volleyball. Money was changing hands with every point, which were all played to the last man standing [it’s not clear what this means]. The men and boys all had pudding bowl haircuts, and some of them wore loin cloths instead of trousers. They played in bare feet. The women sat out on open-sided, roofed platforms on stilts, watching the game and breastfeeding their babies. Some of the women with infants were very young. There was no attempt made to hide their breasts from the visitors.
Sam was surprised that Wilson seemed uninterested in all the bare flesh on display. Then she remembered how racist he was. He probably did not consider Indian women to be humans. She found herself disliking him more and more. There were many young children. A crowd of them played a rough game of football. Boys and girls played together.
‘The women here get married at thirteen,’ said Wilson. ‘Why aren’t you married? Are you divorced?’
‘I don’t want to get married,’ she replied, ‘It is not compulsory.’
‘But you have a boyfriend?’
‘Not right now.’
‘You should go out with a man from Sierramar. We are the best.’
‘Maybe,’ said Sam feeling uncomfortable and moving away.
Everyone in the village was very respectful to Don Moises. They treated him with something approaching reverence. Some of the women brought their babies to him for a blessing. Sam was frustrated that she could not ask him why they did this without using Wilson, whom she was avoiding as much as possible. Wilson had been behaving oddly, and being unable to communicate clearly meant that she could not fathom what the problem was. She resolved to work even harder to learn Spanish. Meanwhile, sh
e also treated Don Moises with lots of respect and got a nod of approval in acknowledgement.
The village was situated near the equator, so it got dark every evening at half past six. Since there was no electricity, this was usually the signal for everyone to retire to their houses and go to sleep, as they all rose at dawn every day. However, after dinner, someone had started the generator with fuel they had brought from Riccuarte for the village. Soon, the bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling gave out bright light. A party began on the ground floor of the building where they were staying. This was mostly an excuse to make the visitors pay for a few bottles of cheap rum to get drunk on but there was also music from a big cassette player for dancing.
All the children of the village pulled themselves up onto the porch to watch the adults dancing through the windows. There was a lot of pushing and shoving and some tears as they fought for the best view. Some of the bigger children joined in with the dancing. Sam went to the party out of politeness, although she was desperate for sleep. The party was in their building, so there was no chance of an early night.
One of the men cornered Sam, grabbing Wilson by the arm and indicating that he should translate.
‘Are you married?’
‘No, not married yet.’
‘Good. Are you barren?’
Wilson looked amused as he somehow conveyed this to Sam in English.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You are very old to be single. Are you strong?’
‘Yes, I am very strong,’ she answered and wished she could show him by punching him hard.
‘I need a wife.’
Sam was about to inform him about the chances of snowflakes in hell but Wilson intervened and took the man off to get another drink. The approach was a compliment of sorts, but it always depressed Sam to discover that the role of women had not changed in most places. As a guest of the village, she needed to be polite. She danced with anyone who asked, being careful to dance with the older, more important men first.
The dance floor was soon covered in the squashed corpses of the large jungle moths, which had congregated around the lights and were dying in droves. Some of the more enthusiastic dancers skidded across the carnage. Luckily, Don Moises was tired after his revels of the night before and he sent the last of the dancers tottering off to bed before it got too late.
The members of the expedition climbed the stairs to go to sleep on the top floor of the building, which was composed of one large bedroom and two smaller locked rooms at one end. The men from Riccuarte all slept in a row, with Dona Elodea at the end beside the wall. Sam would have liked to sleep beside her but Wilson indicated that she was to sleep at the far end of the room against the opposite wall. He put his gear down between Sam and the workers. She assumed he meant to protect her from any drunken assaults. She set up her mosquito net, attaching it to the wall, and lay under it on top of her sleeping bag. She tried to get to sleep, exhausted by her day in the jungle.
Just as she drifted off, a hand crept under her net, and someone lunged at her out of the dark. Terror forced the air out of her lungs. She could not see who it was but then she smelt him. Wilson! It was Wilson and now he was on top of her. She struggled under his weight, his foul breath in her face. She tried to push him off but to no avail. He started pawing at her breasts and grinding against her. He tried to kiss her, his moustache wet and his breath smelling of cigarettes. He tried to stick his tongue into her mouth. A screaming rage filled her chest. He was trying to rape her. She could not believe it was happening. She opened her mouth to scream but then stopped. Could she count on the right type of response to her plight? She did not know how the men would react. She certainly could not explain in Spanish. What if they helped him? Or joined in and raped her, too?
Repulsion made her freakishly strong. She freed her hands. When he lifted himself up for a second, she pushed him off her with her left hand and, swivelling to give herself room, gave him a right hook into the solar plexus as hard as she could. Sam had done some self-defence training for fun with a former boyfriend, who wanted her to be able to protect herself while he was at sea. She knew to leave one knuckle sticking out when she punched him. She gasped at the pain in her hand. Wilson rolled completely off her, bringing down the mosquito net. He lay wheezing on the floor of the hut.
When he got his breath back, he stumbled out of the room and went down the stairs, bumping off the walls. He left the building and did not come back all night. Sam was furious and scared. She sat on the floor trembling and trying to think of what to do and what would come next. What if someone else thought she was fair game? What could she say in her pigeon Spanish to make them go away? For all she knew, the villagers might think it was Wilson’s droit de seigneury to have the gringa and maybe theirs, too.
She was shaking with fury and the after-effects of fear. She wanted to cry but she was afraid to. She felt dirty and ashamed. Putting her mosquito net up again, she was conscious that she was being watched and that not everyone was still asleep. Who was it? She could not see. Trying to calm herself, she lay down under her net, tense and furious. She lay awake the entire night, running through the attack again and again in her head. Why had Wilson attacked her? Was she safe now? By the morning she could almost imagine that it had been a bad dream. But she knew that it was not.
***
In the morning, Wilson apologised to her in halting English.
‘I am sorry, Sam. Very sorry. I thought you, well you know, I thought you…’
He saw the fury on Sam’s face and stopped speaking.
‘You thought I what, Wilson? You thought I would like to be raped in front of the workers?’
‘I don’t understand Sam. Speak slowly.’
‘Fuck. Off. And. Die. Is that slow enough for you?’
She could see that Wilson was now in a total panic. She guessed that he was afraid that she would tell Mike about him. Had he not imagined that she could resist his advances? She had no idea what was going on in Wilson’s head. She was humiliated and indignant. She was all alone in the jungle, unable to speak for herself, reliant on his good graces to get along and totally vulnerable. He had tried to take advantage of her while her defences were down. She was apoplectic but unable to let off steam in front of everyone or in any satisfactory language. Now, he followed her around like a lost dog, chain smoking and apologising.
For the whole day, Sam sat as far away from him as possible every time they stopped their progress downriver in the canoes to do some sampling. She did not address a word to him. Wilson wore his trademark all black outfit accessorised with black wellingtons. He looked much older than his thirty-three years, his face in shadow under his fedora emphasising his smoker’s wrinkles. The morning dragged.
Sam pretended not to understand anything he said in either language. She was determined to carry on somehow but desperate to get back in the canoe and head home. A profound feeling of humiliation weighed her down. She felt lost. She sat apart from the group, listening to her Spanish tapes and mouthing the words silently. She had never imagined anything like this could happen to her. She had a horrible hollow feeling in her chest.
Just when she was about to burst into tears, she heard a strange, high peeping sound in the jungle. The men heard it, too, and started talking and pointing at Sam. They had noticed that she had removed herself from the group and did not smile or try to talk. Sam had displayed a particular interest in photographing everything that moved or did not. Rijer went up to Sam and pointed into the jungle. He did a pantomime of taking a photograph and pulled Sam’s arm to make her come with him.
The men took off into the jungle, dragging her with them. She was frightened but she had understood the pantomime about the camera, so she ran with them. Wilson and Don Moises showed no interest in the frog noise and did not go. The hunters ran quite far at right angles to the river until they stopped at a short, wet rock face. They pointed at a bush. Sam looked into the gloom and could not see a thing. She could still hea
r the peeping sound. She nodded unconvinced. They kept pointing with insistent fingers. Suddenly, though the shadows, she saw a bright green snake slithering off into the darkness with a frog’s legs sticking out of its mouth. The frog was peeping forlornly, trapped in the jaws of the snake. She cursed her cowardice and snapped a photo of what later turned out to be the back view of a very well camouflaged snake with what looked like twigs in its mouth.
She was remonstrating with herself for being feeble when she looked up through the bushes at the face of the rock. To her surprise, the early morning sun was highlighting some worn steps cut into the stone. The steps were concave with use and had pools of water in them with sediment at the bottom. Rijer grinned when he saw Sam had seen them. He took a plastic sample bag out of his pocket and ate the leftover piece of meat he had secreted in it. Then, he turned the bag inside out and filled it with sediment from two of the steps. The other men slapped him on the shoulder and seemed amused by their trip and pleased that Sam had got her photograph.
They all walked back out to the river, where Rijer emptied the sample bag into a pan and sat in the water. He carefully swirled the contents around the pan, reducing the coarser material until there were only black sands at the bottom. He beckoned Sam closer. As she leant in, he trickled water across the sand, washing it down the pan. A strip of golden flakes appeared at the bottom of the pan.
‘Incas,’ he said, making a digging motion.
‘Incas?’ queried Sam.
Wilson had been observing and cautiously stepped closer.
‘Maybe Inca make steps,’ he suggested, ‘for to catch gold?’
Sam had not been aware that the Incas had been in this part of Sierramar. She had always heard that they were mountain people. She was intrigued by the steps and would have liked to have stayed to do some exploring. But they had work to do. Don Moises in particular was insistent that they leave as soon as possible. So, the day went on in the established pattern with Sam now happier after her short adventure but still avoiding Wilson.